14 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY

possessed peoples across the borders. The natural bor-

ders were the hills, and the hunted populations taking refuge in them were forced down the southern slopes upon the deserts. Gradually through the ages the deserts became the home of nomad peoples, who learned, wander-

ing upon the inhospitable face of their drifting sands, to pluck subsistence from widely scattered patches of fertility. These wandering tribes, known under many names, from the Toucouleurs, Tuaregs, Kabyls, Amozighs of the West, to the Tibboos, Berdoas, and others of the eastern borders of the desert, are generally classed as Berbers. It is

under the name of Berbers that they are most frequently alluded to by Arab historians, from whom, at a much later period, we derive our principal knowledge of them.

Between the coast strip and Negroland the desert itself became in this manner sparsely inhabited by a race which, though it is held to have had one Libyan origin, suffered in the course of history so many invasions and infusions of new blood, that it has broken into almost countlessly diverse tribes, cherishing many and widely differing traditions.

Speaking in roughly general terms, the Berbers are a white people who, having a tradition that they once were Christian, now profess Mohammedanism. North Africa, in the centuries which elapsed between the birth of Christ and the appearance of Mohammed, was the favoured home of Christianity. The names of its saints and martyrs stand high upon Christian rolls. St. Cyprian suffered at Car-

thage. St. Augustine was born at Hippo. Tertullian and Lactantius, if they were not African, bore eloquent testimony to the fervour of the African Church. In the many contests of early Christian councils it was the African divines who finally triumphed and gave to Christianity its

Western form. The African, like the Syrian desert, was at one time honeycombed with the cells of hermits and

self-torturing monks. There was no heresy that had not its counterblast in Africa. Proselytism was perhaps no-

where more active. There is, therefore, nothing to sur-